Development of a Patient-Reported Symptom Item Bank for Patients with Hepatobiliary or Pancreatic Malignancies: A Systematic Review

Jingyu Zhang,1,* Yinxia Zhan,2,* Jiaojiao Chen,2 Dan Kang,2 Rumei Xiang,2 Ruoyi Zhang,2 Yubo Zhang,1 Yang Pu,2 Jiayuan Zhang,1 Lijun Zhang,2 Yanyan Huang,2 Ruoyan Gong,2 Xueyao Su,2 Yuxian Nie,1 Qiuling Shi1,2 1State Key Laboratory of Ultrasound in Medicine and Engineering, College of Biomedical Engineering, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Public Health, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Qiuling Shi, State Key Laboratory of Ultrasound in Medicine and Engineering, Chongqing Medical University, No. 1, Medical College Road, Yuzhong District, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-18290585397, Email qshi@cqmu.edu.cnBackground: Patients with hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancers often experience severe symptoms, resulting in a sharp decline in functioning, poor quality of life, and increased mortality risk. Early and effective management of symptoms allows a better quality of life and reduced mortality, depending on the selection of appropriate assessment of specific symptoms for a defined purpose. We aimed to develop a symptom measurement item bank for hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancers.Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement was applied to organize this systematic review. The articles validated patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancer and published before December 2021 were retrieved from the Web of Science, PubMed, Embase databases and Cochrane Library. Items from the existing PROMs were selected and classified into different patient-reported symptoms based on the concepts and specific underlying constructs of the objects measured.Results: Sixteen unique PROMs were identified across the 29 eligible studies included in our analysis. Items from the literature review (14 PROMs with 421 items for which information was obtained) were selected and classified. As a result of this study, we developed a symptom item bank with 40 patient-reported symptoms and 229 assessment items for hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancer, and fatigue, pain and nausea were the most common symptom items.Conclusion: We developed an item bank to assess the patient-reported symptoms of hepatobiliary or pancreatic cancer. This item bank could allow researchers to select appropriate measures of symptom and provide a basis for the development of a single-item symptom-measurement system.Keywords: patient-reported outcome measures, symptom, item bank, pancreatic carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, systematic review